A “PUBLIC spirited” lorry driver deliberately blocked the exit of a garage to prevent a drink driver from going back on the roads, York Magistrates Court heard.

Sarah Finney, 41, was three times the drink drive limit, said Sarah Tyrer, prosecuting, and had a nine or ten year old child with her.

On her way to the garage in Tadcaster she had been weaving back and forth on the A162 and driving so badly people in the car following her had called police via 999.

She got a bottle of wine from the garage shop and got back into the car and when the lorry blocked her way, she shouted “get out of my way” before getting out and walking away.

She refused to take a breath test at the scene, but did take one at Fulford Road Police Station.

Her solicitor Tariq Hussain said she had had three large glasses of wine.

Finney, of a caravan park in Ulleskelf, near Selby, pleaded guilty to drink driving. She was banned from driving for three years, fined £1,500 and ordered to pay a £150 statutory surcharge and £85 prosecution costs.

District judge Adrian Lower said the lorry driver had acted in a “public spirited way”.

“He stopped you going back onto the road with all the consequences that could have followed with you being on the road when you were not fit to drive,” he told Finney.

She had risked the life of the child with her, her own life and that of other motorists.

Mr Hussain said she usually lived in Australia with her husband, but had come to the UK to be with her ill father.

“She is desperate to be able to get back to her husband,” he said.

She had walked away from her car because it had been blocked in.

The Australian drink drive limit is lower than that of the UK.